So into it He breathed a song,
And suddenly, with petals strong
As wings, away it flew."
And there is Eben E. Rexford, who almost loses himself in a tangle of metaphors in his efforts to express his admiration of this bird with the cerulean plumes. Hark to his rhapsody:
"Winged lute that we call a bluebird, you blend in a silver strain
The sound of the laughing waters, the patter of spring's sweet rain,
The voice of the winds, the sunshine, and fragrance of blossoming things;
Ah! you are an April poem that God has dowered with wings."
On our return to the plains from a two weeks' trip to Georgetown and Gray's Peak, we spent several days at Arvada, a village about halfway between Denver and Golden. The place was rife with birds, all of which are described in other chapters of this volume.[10] Mention need be made here only of the song-sparrows, which were seen in a bushy place through which a purling stream wound its way. Of course, they were Melospiza fasciata montana, but their clear, bell-like trills were precise copies of those of the merry lowland minstrels of the East. Special attention is called to the fact that, in my first visit to Colorado, the only place in which mountain song-sparrows were met with was Buena Vista, quite a distance up among the mountains, while in the visit now being described they were not found anywhere in the mountains, save in the vale below Cassels. They were breeding at Arvada, for a female was seen carrying a worm in her bill, and I am sure a nest might easily have been found had I not been so busily occupied in the study of other and rarer species. However, the recollection of the merry lyrists with the speckled breasts and silvery voices, brings to mind Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton's "Myth of the Song-Sparrow," from which it will be seen that this attractive bird has had something of an adventurous career:
"His mother was the Brook, his sisters were the Reeds,